Two Social Sites Emerge From IOP

Former Institute of Politics (IOP) fellow Ron Fournier said this month that he is launching a new social networking site called Hotsoup.com that he started with a team that includes eight prominent political advisors from both sides of the aisle.

But while Fournier’s announcement occurred little more than two weeks ago, the idea for a social networking site with political bent is not new—one Harvard graduate who worked for Fournier at the IOP launched a similar site last fall.

Joseph Green ’05-’06 launched Essembly.com, a site that connects people who share beliefs on specific political issues, last September.

Green worked as a research assistant for Fournier in the spring of 2005 and said he consulted Fournier about his idea more than a year ago.

Green, who was president of the Harvard Political Union, said he thought of creating Essembly after he worked for Sen. John F. Kerry, (D-Mass.)’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire in the summer of 2003. That fall, he roomed with Mark E. Zuckerberg, formerly Class of 2006, who launched Facebook.com in February 2004.

Green had heard of Six Degrees, an early social networking website that has since closed, and thought of putting a political spin on the online community trend. He thought it would be useful to have an online directory where users could see how they are geographically and politically connected.

After Facebook’s launch, Green said he realized that people use online social networking sites mostly for what he calls “social validation,” and he decided to create a site that would allow users to validate their political opinions.

Fournier, the former chief political writer for the Associated Press who will serve as editor-in-chief for the site, said that despite the makeup of his team, Hotsoup is not geared only to politics, but also to entertainment and business.

Fournier said that Hotsoup, which has not launched yet, will seek to bring together “Opinion Drivers” from the nightly news anchor or socially-conscious citizens.

“They’re news junkies. They care about issues,” he said. “They like to hear about things first.”

Green said that he discussed the site extensively with Fournier in the spring of 2005, and that he even showed him the site’s business plan.

“He hadn’t really heard about social networking,” Green said about meeting with Fournier. Green also wrote in an e-mail that he “gave him a long explanation of social networking’s development and why people use it, and why it could be very useful for politics.”

Fournier said he and Green did speak about the site, but that he does not recall seeing a business plan.

He added that he was only brought onto the Hotsoup team in May 2006, when the idea for the site had already been developed, and eight months after Essembly was publicly launched.

Fournier said that he first became familiar with online social networking before he came to Harvard while researching for his upcoming book, “Applebee’s America: How Successful Political, Business, and Religious Leaders Connect with the New American Community.”

Green and other students helped Fournier work on the book when he was at Harvard.

“Joe is a great guy who helped research the book and he was the first person to tell me about [Essembly]; he wasn’t the first to tell me about social networking,” Fournier wrote in an e-mail.

“I think [Essembly is] a fascinating idea. It’s based on the same concept as Hotsoup.com: creating an on-line community of people,” he wrote. He added that Essembly was not the inspiration for Hotsoup, and that he does not view his site, which is not purely political in nature, to be in competition with Green’s.

One of Essembly’s features has users create political “resolves.” Then other users vote to agree or disagree with the opinions in specific resolves, which can cover topics including gay marriage and the Israel-Palestine debate.

“People just love the resolves,” Green said. “It’s validation—you can put something out there and people start voting on it within minutes.”

Hotsoup will allow users to create their own discussions on various topics, from politics to entertainment to sports, and to interact with eminent political and media figures, Fournier said.

Resolves will not be among Hotsoup’s features, he added.

Essembly currently has 20,000 users, according to Green. Hotsoup, which will launch in October, had 300,000 hits in its first week on the web, according to a Hotsoup press release.

Green said that while there have been political networking sites before Essembly—including left-leaning Dfalink.com—he thinks that his site was the first to be ostensibly neutral.

“We are the first I am aware of that is open to all viewpoints, and that focuses on the exchange of user opinion,” Green said. He added in an e-mail that he and his team “are all college kids trying to change things from the grassroots, we are not political insiders like hotsoup.”

—Staff writer Katherine M. Gray can be reached at kmgray@fas.harvard.edu.